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Surrounded by the polished concrete walls and sparse décor of London's Ace Hotel, Sony's Hirotaka Tako looks right at home. Here, nestled within the bustling hipster capital of Shoreditch, the hotel is playing host to Tako's latest creation, an LED TV so thin that it almost disappears into the wall. His X90C is the product of years of engineering and design refinement, a monolithic black slab that's as austere as the achingly hip hotel that surrounds it.

It marks a dramatic turnaround for a company that has had its fair share of design ups and downs over the years. Even at what many might think of as Sony's peak in the 1980s, when the likes of the Walkman and Trinitron TV ruled the world, it faced slumping sales, and product designs that were rapidly becoming dated. A project known as "Spirit," which brought together Sony's top designers to create conceptual products, briefly helped to turn the company's fortunes around with slick (by '90s standards) designs, and products like the MiniDisc.

Today, Sony faces other challenges, not least of which is the rise of Korean powerhouse Samsung and the continued dominance of Apple, both of which have considerable design chops. As Kaz Hirai recognised when he took over as CEO in 2012, Sony's success has always stemmed from its products, and their simplicity of design and clear functionality. "I'm not an engineer. I get that," Hirai said recently. "But at least I’d like to think that I'm a consumer of products."

Designers like Hirotaka Tako—now Sony Creative's chief art director—are the personification of Hirai's product-led strategy. "We never pushed Kaz to talk about design," laughs Tako when I ask about his new boss. "But we now have much more time to present directly to Kaz now, compared to five years ago. He now gets interested in design more, he wants to better understand what's behind the products."

A design for life

At Sony Japan, Hirai has equipped the ground floor of its headquarters with a Creative Lab—an open space allows anyone in the company to come up with ideas for new products. Inside there are 3D printers and laser-cutting machines where younger employees congregate in the hope of creating the next big thing. And with First Flight—Sony's crowdfunding platform—the company can help bring those ideas to the public, without the complexity of a full product launch.

A few floors up from the Creative Lab is Sony's famous Design Centre, where a team of around 20 elite designers spread over four different categories obsess over the company's more established product lines.

"We always talk, talk, talk, and then draw, and then write, and then mock up, and then go back to talking,” says Tako. "It's called 'shingy' in Japanese. It's the really the unique system of the in-house design studio. Even for really small details like the radius on the corner of the X90C stand for example, we gather together in one room, then point out a flaw and say 'it's better to have 1mm more here.' This kind of discussion is always happening, and it's really important."

Another "shingy" takes place once a designer has a finished prototype to present. The creative directors of each of the product categories (Tako's group looks after TVs, audio equipment, and Life Space UX) gather to dissect new prototypes, and offer feedback on each group's products. Sometimes, products only need small changes. Other times, they're passed back to the original designer to make significant changes before passing them through the wider group again, or are scrapped altogether.

Enlarge/ It might look simple, but even this TV stand took was the result of hundreds of hours of work from Sony's designers.

"That process takes a really long time," says Tako. "People will tell you if [a design] is not good, or if it needs to change. That kind of thing is really heavy. A look that might work for a sound bar or a TV might not always work with mobile, because [TVs] are a kind of furniture. But a mobile is more careful, it has to fit into your lifestyle, it's totally different. But in discussion we can find the small, unique touches that would make it a Sony product. So we can't explain it, we can't write down what is a Sony design, but we know it when we see it and say 'OK, you can have a Sony logo.'"

This process can take its toll. The X90C spent over two years in development, during which Tako and his team created over 100 different prototypes before the TV entered manufacturing—even Tako admits this was a "really long time." Engineers struggled with shrinking down the layers behind the display, while Tako and his design team agonised over the tiniest details in its construction.

Where a typical product would only incorporate one new piece of technology each year, the X90C used two: an edge coating system that merged two of the front display layers into one, and another that merged the light source (LEDs) with the back chassis, further reducing the TV's thickness. This combination of two untested technologies into a single new product proved unusual for Sony's engineers, who were used to gradual iteration over several years, rather than drastic product overhauls. Tako recalls that his team first asked for a 5mm thin TV panel over 10 years ago. With the X90C, Tako finally has his wish: the 4K edge-lit TV is just 4.3mm at its thinnest point.

Tako's other struggle with the X90C were over something far more mundane: its stand. Made of two metal feet that sit at either side of the monolithic TV, the stand is deceptively simple; its only standout feature is the ability to slide each foot inwards, so that the TV can be sat on top of smaller surfaces. But, as is often the case, the simplest solutions are the most difficult to create. Hundreds of hours of design work were ploughed into the X90C's stand, with the end product—a triangular prism hewn out of solid aluminium—a result of an origami model that reduced the stand down to the absolute bare essentials.

"Normally, the design of the stand shouts too much—things like polished metal, or elaborate shapes," explains Tako. "But at Sony Design we always think that simplicity is right to make the content stand out. That's why we always seek the possibility of the flat surface design: less lines, less complicated design. The stand of the X90C is a minimal stand, just the four points you need in order to stand up the TV securely. The shape is precisely controlled to support the balancing point of the TV. Otherwise, the one leg could break, or the TV could fall over. So you can't move any line in the design, or change the depth, or the finish—it's perfectly controlled."

Thin is in

But for all of Tako's, and by extension Sony's focus on practical, simple design, there's one thing that's puzzling: why the obsession with thinness? While aesthetically desirable, with thinness comes compromise. Even Sony's own mobile team favours bigger batteries in its devices instead of a slimmer profile. In the pursuit of making the X90C as thin as possible, in order to "have the TV look like a window," the full array of LED backlighting favoured by enthusiasts for its wider contrast levels and deeper blacks couldn't be used. Instead, it uses a weaker edge-lighting system, albeit a well implemented one. At a price of £2699 ($4000) for a 65-inch version (or £1799, $2,500 for a 55-inch version), it doesn't come cheap.

Tako is quick to rebut such criticisms, but admits that his group had to give up something in order to create the final product. "Plus, if you have one flat surface like this with such a narrow bezel," continued Tako, "now you don't have enough space for even the Sony logo! This core [Tako points to the small IR bulge at the bottom of the TV], with the LED light, and IR sensor, and light sensor, and WiFi, and Bluetooth, and everything in it, this is a really smart structure that we took from the inside to the outside, because the panel is so thin. I don't think it's a compromise, because it has to be there."

Great design isn't the be all and end all for Sony. Despite all of the design effort that has gone into the X90C, its Xperia phones, and its high-end audio equipment, the company still hasn't found its killer product—that eureka moment that redefines a product category, or creates an entirely new one like the Walkman did. But Sony is trying with initiatives like First Flight, and so too is Tako. He remained coy about his own possible First Flight ambitions, but was optimistic about smart home technology.

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"Designing TVs is almost like designing your space, because it's big. Smart home, IoT, and TVs are almost the same for me, because it's an object, but an object that can give you important information that really changes your life. My challenge is always to try and blend [devices] into a space. IoT and smart devices are the same: I want to blend everything in the wall, or into the floor. If you can see the sensors in a room, it's too cold, too clinical."

Regardless of where Tako's formidable design chops are applied next, that Sony has a renewed interest in design, especially considering its heritage, is reassuring. The company hasn't had the most profitable few years, with its smartphone division in particular putting a huge dent in the company's cash reserves. Great design alone won't fix that, but it will help.

"If you studied industrial design at university, that's not enough any more," says Tako. "In our team, as well as designing the TV, they also also have to think about the interface. That's a big difference from 10 years ago. Simplicity of design and the functionality of the design is a Sony design. We now think we're getting back to that—not designing shiny loud designs. It's more muted. We always have this Sony design in mind. So that's kind of different from 10 years ago. We don't need things that shout "new design!"